JACKSON CURTIS (JOHN CUSACK) AND HIS DAUGHTER LILLY (MORGAN LILY) flee the oncoming apocalypse in the Roland Emmerich film “2012” which flooded theaters last Friday. photo courtesy of ACESHOWBIZ.COM
If Hollywood had its way, we’d all be dead by now.
Whether our planet is fighting aliens or experiencing deadly global warming events, the epic disaster movie as seen in “Independence Day” and “The Day After Tomorrow” is back. Not surprisingly, Roland Emmerich (who directed both) is at the helm once again – and without any new tricks up his sleeves. Disaster strikes. People die. But the human will to rise above all obstacles prevails, leaving a small few to fight for a new world, sans the White House. Sound familiar?
“2012,” Emmerich’s newest flick, isn’t anything new. Not that we expected it to be. The plot is simple, leaving much to be desired for substance. The Mayan calendar that predicts the world coming to an end in 2012 turns out to be right. There are solar flares and all kinds of scientific phenomena that heat up the earth’s core, causing a full tectonic shift. All science aside, it’s kind of fun seeing California turn to rubble, volcanoes erupting in Yellowstone Park and massive tsunamis taking out China. It all makes for good entertainment, especially when John Cusack is the one running away from it all.
Cusack plays an everyman – a wannabe novelist, divorced from his wife and estranged from his two kids. But when his world literally comes crashing down around him, he is left with no other choice than to try to save his family from imminent destruction.
The problem with Cusack’s constant hero attempts is where “2012” starts to be redundant. Cusack, driving a limo, deftly maneuvers his way through the streets of California during an earthquake and escapes within seconds. A truck falls into an abyss of molten earth, leaving Cusack to climb up a cliff face at the last minute, remarkably unscathed. Cusack drives a sports car off a moving airplane just minutes before the plane crashes. It’s one narrow escape after another, leaving one to wonder how this guy could be so lucky.
While the whole family aspect is nice, the audience is never given much of a chance to get to know Cusack or his loved ones. This leaves the film to rely entirely upon Cusack’s charisma to draw viewers in. The rest of “2012” lags with scenes that are supposed to be emotional but never are. The majority of scenes are big-budget action sequences that seem illogical even by Hollywood standards, and bad acting by exceptional actors.
Despite all of this, “2012” can be enjoyed for what it is – a silly disaster film that will inevitably be forgotten months from now. Forgotten, that is, until the next big Emmerich motion picture comes out. But Emmerich better come up with some new material before then. After all, there are only so many ways you can take out the White House.
MOVIE: 2012 | VERDICT: 2.5 stars
